May 19, 2024: Also available as a podcast on our YouTube channel! Our final Enneagram type, the Nine, the Peacemaker, is the part of us that is driven to seek inner and outer peace for ourselves and others. This is also the part of us that embodies the fundamental challenge of all spiritual or inner work – being awake rather than asleep to our true nature. Whew. Sounds exhausting. At least to a Nine. Maybe I’ll sleep just a little bit longer. […]
May 12, 2024: “You bring an aster, I’ll bring a rose” — here’s an invitation to bring a flower to celebrate our annual tradition of the Flower Ceramony! On the anniversary of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s founding, we’ll celebrate our pluralist tradition’s roots in a vision of a community that honors each of us, as varied as all the flowers of spring. We’ll reflect, too, on the anti-war principles seeded into both the history of the Flower Ceramony in our tradition and the founding of Mother’s Day. […]
May 5, 2024: Also available as a podcast on our YouTube channel!
Our year-long look into aspects of our personalities is meant, in part, to strengthen our ability to live the pluralism our tradition claims as important. We begin this month’s pluralism theme with a dive into Fiveness. The head-centered “Investigator” is the part of us that wants to find out why things are the way they are and to understand how the world works – always searching, asking questions, and testing truth for ourselves. Sounds like many a Unitarian Universalist. […]
April 28, 2024: Core Values exercises can help individuals focus their life energies and attention in ways that align with what truly matters most to them. So too with groups of people, with the added and significant step of figuring out which values are genuinely shared. This Sunday we kick off our final preparation for an Association-wide attempt to spell out anew our “corps” shared values for ourselves and the world. No small thing in an individualist culture and nation. […]
April 21, 2024: On the day before Earth Day, we’ll contemplate our little planet and our interdependence with it. As Gary Snyder wrote, “Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.” With reverence for the great web of life and with humility, we acknowledge our place in it. […]
April 14, 2024:
Also availabe as a podcast on our YouTube Channel!
Sometimes the fun-loving, spontaneous, high-energy, upbeat, enthusiastic part of us is exactly these things. And sometimes these are ways to cope, ways to avoid feeling a deep pain beneath the surface. It is no accident that the Laugh Factory in Hollywood has a Psychologist-in-Residence for its comedians. This Sunday, we look into the Enneagram 7 – the Enthusiast – in all of us. […]
April 7, 2024: For several months, Rev. Kevin put out a call for people interested in planning a service together focused on the theme of interdependence. Seemed natural enough. However, there were no takers. Hmmmm… Rooted in the aspects of Citizenship lifted up earlier in the year, we’ll figure out this service together, beginning with a one-day instant choir which will rehearse before the service. […]
March 31, 2024: Renewal, resurrection, and rebirth is the invitation and celebratory focus of many spring holidays and holydays in northern climes, rooted in the miracle of returning green life and growing sunlight and warmth after the protective stillness and pulling-in of winter. Come, celebrate the new in you ready to be born. (Easter bonnets/hats optional.) […]
March 24, 2024:The Shadow refers to all the aspects of our selves that we refuse to acknowledge – the “good” as well as the “bad” – that nonetheless impact the way we behave. Because we cannot see into our blind spots (think about those unnerving driving blind spots) there is often a difference between who we think we are and who we really are as we move through the world. The life-long spiritual journey involves coming to know, accept, and integrate all the parts of our selves. This Holy Week let’s risk taking a peek behind us. […]
March 17, 2024: At the yearly balance point of dark and light known as the Spring Equinox, we pause to celebrate the symmetry of the celestial sphere of which we all are a part. We’ll create a community altar from found objects as we honor Nature during this Earthy, ritual-based service.
